Savage Lands by Clare Clark Read Free Book Online

struck the ship as it sailed from Havana; some twenty of the soldiers and crewmen on board the Pélican were dead. As Elisabeth trailed with the chickens onto the dock, all of them gaunt and several feverish, she noticed him, standing a little way off. The heat was overpowering, the windless air clinging to them like damp cobwebs, but he stood easily, as though he were quite comfortable. She watched as his eyes slid over them one after another, skimming across her and past her without snagging. Then she had only held her head a little higher, swaying on legs rendered unsteady by the shiftless solidity of the earth, and turned away to follow the ragged crocodile of girls to the commandant’s dwelling. These days she tried not to remember it. When the image came to her unbidden, something opened inside her and the depth of it made her dizzy.
    She shook her head, swinging her legs to the bare floor. It was late. She should already be dressed. For the first time since she had come to Louisiana, there was a coolness in the air. She took the blanket from the bed and wrapped its weight around her shoulders, burying her face in its coarse weave. It smelled of leather and tobacco and, faintly, of stale wine. As she breathed it in, tasting its distillation in her mouth, her belly tumbled and she clenched her hands into fists, pulling the blanket tight around her shoulders until it held her close, its beard-rough lips pressed to the line of her jaw. She closed her eyes, one cold hand pressed tight against the throb of her neck, giving herself up to the lack of him.
    A sudden brisk banging at the door caused her to startle. Curling herself into a ball, Elisabeth burrowed into the disordered bed, her nose pressed into the pillow. There was another flurry of knocking, causing the wooden latch to jump in its rest.
    ‘Elisabeth? Are you there? Elisabeth?’
    It was Perrine Roussel, the wife of the carpenter. Elisabeth hugged her knees, her face hidden in the blanket, and waited for her to go away. Despite everything, the chickens still contrived to call round. They peered around her cabin and urged her to join with them in grumbling about the shameful conditions in which they were expected to live. They complained of the mosquitoes, of the inadequate housing, of their husbands and, most of all, of the dearth of proper white flour for bread.
    The savages did not grow wheat. The planter Rivard had twice attempted to grow it at his concession at Bayou Saint-Jean but, though the first signs of growth had appeared promising, both times the grain had succumbed to rust in the final weeks of ripening and rotted on the stalk. Few others had followed Rivard’s example. Most of the settlers were soldiers or craftsmen from France’s cities. They possessed little knowledge of farming and less inclination to learn. Not one among them had journeyed halfway across the world to labour in the fields. Besides, the colony lacked tools and oxen. Some of the men raised small gardens behind their cabins as they had done in France, but for everything else they were dependent upon the savages, who had no cows or pigs and made their greasy yellow bread from ground corn. There was no bacon, no fresh pork or beef, only the tough, stringy meat of wild creatures hunted in the forest. As for white flour, that staple of every respectable French home, it was an expensive luxury, available only when the ships brought it three thousand miles across the sea.
    The chickens deemed the situation intolerable. Just the day before, Anne Negrette and the others had told Elisabeth that they meant to take their objections to the commandant to protest the impossibility of surviving without it. They had urged her to come with them, had declared it imperative that they all stick together. Now they sent the carpenter’s wife, to ensure her attendance.
    ‘Elisabeth? Elisabeth Savaret, are you there?’
    A grey shadow stained the stuff that covered the far window, the tip of a nose dark